


the world i was

by nebulakoos



Category: Kate Daniels - Ilona Andrews
Genre: Brief mention of other characters - Freeform, F/M, Requited Unrequited Love, derek breaks into julie's house!!, gratuitous descriptions of wolf grace, julie and derek working together, julie being lovestruck, metal rose, much needed truths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29884017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulakoos/pseuds/nebulakoos
Summary: I projected anger, but what I felt wasn’t truly anger. There was some, for sure: anger that he’d left me, anger that he’d stayed gone. Anger that he hadn’t come back sooner, since it was now clear that he was willing to bear the risks of coming back—anger that he hadn’t borne those risks for me.But there was also relief. Desperate, aching relief, and longing, and love. My entire being was flooded with it. I was so damn happy he was here, alive and well, his scarred face so familiar it had seared itself into my dreams. I wanted him with every inch of me, more than I’d ever wanted anything.-Derek comes back. Julie reckons with this.
Relationships: Derek Gaunt/Julie Olsen
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	the world i was

**Author's Note:**

> Give me a world, you have taken the world I was. - Anne Carson, "O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love"

The Atlanta summer heat made the shabby front of my house feel like a pocket of hell. I dragged myself through the door, wicking sweat from my neck with my palms, and made my way to the sanctuary. The temperature was constantly regulated there, and I couldn’t wait to dip myself in one of the small, cool baths. 

As soon as I entered, I realized something was wrong. Instinct is powerful, and mine had me pulling out a tomahawk even before the sanctuary door closed behind me. There was a presence. Someone was in my space.

There was no chance they hadn’t heard me walk through, but that didn’t mean they had to know where I was going. I moved near soundlessly, my feet barely whispering across the ground. It was a trick Kate had taught me. “The element of surprise is priceless,” she’d said. “It’s the difference between victory and death.”

If my intruder was a shapeshifter, all bets were off.

The kitchen was clear. So too the bathrooms, the pools, the side nooks. No one hid behind the columns or rich draperies. Sighing inwardly, I moved towards the bedroom.

There was no use waiting. I’d long lost the element of surprise. With one decisive movement, I swung the door open and readied my tomahawk to slice.

Then stopped dead.

Derek lay on my bed, the picture of ease and grace, his long legs fully extended. He held something wrapped in cloth and seemed to be examining it, turning it over in his hands. A pillow propped him up just so, and the warm light from a chandelier softened his scars. 

He looked for all the world like a man at home, and yet there was still the unmistakable power and presence of a hunter. The sight of him on my bedsheets sent my mind spiraling.

“You came back.” My voice was flat.

“I did.”

“Ascanio told me.”

He smiled, a wolfish, predatory smile. “How generous of him.”

My entire body trembled with the effort of staying still. I wanted to rush at him, to do what, I wasn’t sure—hit him? Kiss him? 

I projected anger, but what I felt wasn’t truly anger. There was some, for sure: anger that he’d left me, anger that he’d stayed gone. Anger that he hadn’t come back sooner, since it was now clear that he was willing to bear the risks of coming back—anger that he hadn’t borne those risks for me. 

But there was also relief. Desperate, aching relief, and longing, and love. My entire being was flooded with it. I was so damn happy he was here, alive and well, his scarred face so familiar it had seared itself into my dreams. I wanted him with every inch of me, more than I’d ever wanted anything. 

It was terrifying. 

“I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

He raised an eyebrow. 

“Any shapeshifter with a lick of sense knows not to trespass on Pack territory without clearance. Especially not twice. The Beta of Ice Fury ought to be even more careful.”

“Alpha,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s alpha now.” A slow smile spread across his face. “It appears Ascanio’s intelligence was incomplete.”

My mind reeled. He was Alpha of Ice Fury, ruler of the biggest shapeshifter pack in North America. Leadership in Ice Fury fluctuated often on the beta level, but the alpha had held power for decades now, longer than I’d been alive. And in four months, Derek had overhauled that. Now he’d brought his people into the Pack’s territory—directly opposing Jim’s authority.

Gods. The world was going insane.

“You challenged the old alpha?”

Derek nodded. “I already had majority support from the pack. The challenge was more a formality.”

He was downplaying it—challenging an alpha was never a formality. “I heard he was a formidable fighter.”

“Sure, once.” Derek shrugged. “He spent too much time in the wild, hunting. He got used to dealing with animals. He forgot that shapeshifters have human intellect.”

I frowned. “Yes, but in warrior form, aren’t you relying on animal instinct?”

“Partly. With enough practice, you can learn to hold a strong warrior form and keep a handle on your more... human side. I’m a wolf, so I was never going to beat him with sheer strength. I had to outthink him.”

A shiver ran down my spine. The Derek speaking now was a tactical genius, the same Derek who’d done intelligence under Jim and later mercenary work under Kate and Curran. But he was also speaking as Darren Argent, ambitious, cunning, who dug his claws into power and refused to let go. The combination of the two was jarring; I couldn’t have imagined two ideals more different. Yet he’d found a wicked harmony between them both.

Lightly, I said, “I would’ve paid good money to see that.”

“It wasn’t as entertaining as you might think.” Derek leaned back, stretching his arms to the ceiling with a wolf’s uncanny grace. “I faked him out for a few minutes, then tore out his throat.”

“I see.” Casual.

Derek’s attention turned back to the thing in his hands, and a small, odd smile curved his lips as he looked at it. I couldn’t see it from here, but I didn’t want to move any closer. 

Finally, curiosity got the better of me. “Are you planning on sharing with the class?”

He looked up then, regarding me still with that strange smile. Then, with deliberate slowness, he pulled off the cloth and held up the object.

My heart damn near stopped. 

It was my metal rose—the one he’d made for me as a side thought when we’d first met, the one I’d held and protected for thirteen years like it was made of pure gold.

How had I not noticed its absence from the desk? Now it was in his hands, this stupid, sentimental tin rose. It felt like I’d just stripped naked for him. No, worse—it felt like I’d bared my very soul.

Gods, how humiliating. The rose was everything I could never say to him, everything I never wanted him to hear. It would’ve been excusable if I was still a love-struck teenager. But I was grown now, a woman. The implications were far worse. 

“I didn’t know you’d kept it,” he said. His voice was even, giving nothing away. I hated how composed he was, when I felt seconds from exploding.

I forced myself to shrug. “It’s pretty.”

“Pretty,” he repeated, and now there was a hint of amusement in his tone.

I was properly furious now. He had no right to laugh at me. He knew how I’d adored him as a kid. It was unprovoked cruelty for him to lie there, on my bed, holding my rose, making fun of a teenage crush. Who cared that it had blossomed into something more? Who cared that every time I looked at him, my knees went weak, and I wanted to fall into the circle of his arms? 

Before I could speak, he swung his legs off the bed and stood up. The movement was so smooth, so preternaturally graceful, that I could only stare.

“It’s shabby,” he said, and my mind stuttered into motion again.

“Shabby?”

He indicated the rose in his hand. “Shabby work. Uneven edges, dents, poor metal quality. I’ll have to make you a new one.”

What was wrong with him?

“Like hell you will,” I snapped. “Drop the rose and get out of my house.”

He ignored me, examining the rose again. “I remember when I made you this,” he murmured. “Kate was... injured, I think. You were freaked out.”

“They ripped open her back.”

“Yeah.” He grimaced, then looked up at me, as if he’d been reminded of something. His eyes sparked. “You were tiny back then. I remember worrying that you’d trip and fall and break all your bones.”

I’d been a street kid, malnourished and scrappy, barely tipping the scale at eighty pounds. 

“You were crazy, too.” He grinned. “You fought like a maniac when they tried to take you away from Kate. Biting and kicking and scratching everyone. Curran didn’t know what to do with you.”

I didn’t respond. What was I supposed to say? Talking about the past always hurt, but hearing it through Derek’s voice made me ache with homesickness. I missed Kate so much, and Curran, and Conlan, and Doolittle, and Jim and Dali and, gods, Andrea and Raphael, George and Eduardo, Ascanio, Martha. Being in Atlanta as a stranger had taken more of a toll on me than I’d thought. I felt myself drifting towards my old role, the place of perfect belonging. If I walked into the Keep right now and told them who I was, I’d have it all back. The Pack Princess again, the city her playground, beloved and protected by those universally feared.

And the first thing they’d do after welcoming me would be to call Kate, who’d drop everything to come back to Atlanta and greet her daughter. And then she would die.

I shook my head, my stomach roiling with fear and dread. 

Derek’s eyes were on me, assessing, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“You can’t tell anymore who I am,” I said tightly. “Regardless of—how angry you are with me, please don’t give me away. No one can know.”

“Or Kate dies.”

I stared at him in shock. His mouth twisted into a grim smile. “I heard Moloch during the fight. He said he’d kill your mother and enslave your grandmother. That’s Kate... and Erra, yeah?”

I nodded, dumb.

“And he said he wanted you by his side. Like his wife?”

“Something like that,” I said. “Wife, concubine, I don’t know.”

“Why you? And why is he targeting Kate? Is this a Roland thing?”

Derek was all business now. The metal rose still dangled from his fingers, but his attention was completely focused on me. It was a bit unnerving. 

“He’s afraid of her power. Moloch’s an ancient enemy of Shinar. He thinks if Kate and Erra joined forces, they’d reinstate Shinar as an empire. He wants to destroy it, and Kate’s the more vulnerable one.”

“I thought Kate abdicated.”

“She did. Moloch doesn’t care—no, actually, I’m not even sure he understands the concept. She’s still part of the bloodline, so he thinks she’s destined to rule. Even if he knew the truth, though, I don’t think it would make a difference.”

This was an easier subject. I felt the knot in my chest loosen a bit as we moved away from the past and into the present, into action and preventable occurrences.

“But why doesn’t he want to kill you?”

I hesitated. “I... share his power.”

Derek’s eyes flashed gold, but his voice was steady. “What does that mean?”

“About four years ago, I made my way to Moloch’s palace. I fought him and took his eye. It’s why I look like this—the eye’s magic changed me. Physically, at least. It’s a stipulation of the prophecy Sienna gave me. ‘Only the one that shares his power can oppose him’.”

Derek chewed on this for a minute. “If you took his eye,” he said slowly, “did he take yours?”

Grimacing, I nodded. “He has a little of my power, too. I’m guessing this makes me... I don’t know, desirable, somehow. Compatible to rule with him or something.”

Derek’s mouth twisted into the beginning of a snarl, but quickly smoothed out. “That’s disgusting.”

“Don’t I know it.”

If possible, his gaze focused on me even harder. His eyes were backlit with gold. “He’s not getting you.”

“That’s the plan.”

“I mean it, Julie.” There was no humor in his tone. This was the wolf speaking. “He doesn’t deserve to have you. I won’t let him.”

Something twinged inside me. The perfect sincerity of his words, the promise, the terrifying intensity—these were hallmarks of the Derek I knew and loved. He’d protected me with a fervor as a kid, risking his life again and again to save mine. 

I’d been expecting to face Moloch alone, even prepared for it, but I didn’t like it. The idea of having Derek by my side, with his shrewd brilliance and direwolf form and strange, inexplicable magic, made the danger feel... less, somehow. More manageable. Like I might have a chance at surviving. 

“Okay,” I said, and I knew he understood.


End file.
